MEXICO CITY — Much has happened to alter the relationship between the United States and Mexico during the last two years, and Sergio Alcocer Martinez de Castro has been at the center of it.

As Mexico’s undersecretary for North American Affairs, he serves as the country’s point man on foreign policy toward its continental neighbors and was among the key officials to meet with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper during the Biennial of the Americas Summit — primarily a trade meeting — held in Mexico City last month.

Alcocer articulates Mexico’s view on everything from U.S. immigration reform to cross-border drug trafficking, though his emphasis these days is on money. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is attempting the historic privatization of the country’s nationalized energy and manufacturing companies and is seeking foreign investment in oil and gas operations, aeronautics and manufacturing.

Not surprisingly, Colorado businesses that have particular expertise in those areas see the financial opportunity in that.

Alcocer sat for a talk about a wide range of topics, and the conversation covered everything from hot dogs to marijuana.

Question: This trade mission is in Mexico and some people in Colorado see a lot of opportunity here now. This is an unusual time, no?

Alcocer: The relationship between Mexico and the U.S. is, for Mexico, the most important and for the U.S., it should be the most important.

I think there is a lot of potential to increase the investment both from Mexico to Colorado and from Colorado to Mexico because of the type of activity that is done in Colorado, the expertise that Colorado has developed in mining, in the energy sector, in aerospace and aeronautics in general.

I think those are, just to mention a few examples, topics that are of interest in Mexico. Mexico and the U.S. are intertwined in terms of our economy and we need to be more competitive, in order to be, as a region, the most competitive and dynamic.

Question: As a region. You mean North America overall?

Alcocer: We should not think in terms of Mexico and the U.S. and Canada but rather rethink in terms of the region itself, so it makes a lot of sense to work together,

Question: There’s been a lot of talk here about this North American idea, but that’s not something we talk about so much in the U.S.

Alcocer: What we need to do, the three countries, is to develop a more intense strategic communication so that we understand what is the value added from one country into the economy of the other.

When you go to the baseball game and you purchase a hot dog and a beer, well, it happens the bread is manufactured by a Mexican company, and the hot dog itself is manufactured by a Mexican company.

Even moreso, if you look at the contribution of Mexican migrants into the U.S. economy, they are very entrepreneurial. If you sit at a table in a restaurant and you see your peas and your carrots, they have been harvested by migrants on a farm that is American but the workers are Mexican. So there is a logical relationship also between the reform of immigration and the U.S. economy and the regional economy.

Question: What would you like to see happen with U.S. policy toward immigration?

Alcocer: Well, I think this should be a common-sense reform. … If you have a reform in which these 6 or 7 million people that are in the shadows can have the possibilities of improving their status and becoming authorized aliens in the U.S. by paying taxes, the economy is going to be improved. There is a pragmatism involved in this.

Question: What is Mexico’s interest, though, in immigrants being legal in the U.S.?

Alcocer: For us, we try to maintain as close contact as possible to immigrants of Mexican origination in the U.S. because, of course, we consider them to be Mexicans. They were born, some of them, in Mexico, and although they are first- or second-generation Americans, we consider them to be Mexicans and we … don’t want them to lose their cultural roots.

However, we think that, although they are already working in some villages and farms and what have you, we consider that the best we can do is to protect their interests and their legal rights, their labor rights.

The position of the Mexican government is that we favor any reform that improves the development of their inclusion in American society.

Question: Marijuana is legal in Colorado now. It’s a great experiment for us, but I wonder what you think of that and how that impacts you.

Alcocer: We consider that to be an experiment and we are looking very carefully at what is going to be the outcome of the experiment.

Of course, it has an impact on how drugs are being marketed in North America, which we must realize is again a regional issue. You have an offer-and-demand type of process and, of course, it has consequences in terms of security.

Question: When you say it impacts security, what do you mean?

Alcocer: Well, security in terms of trafficking drugs. Less and less seizures at the border are being made of marijuana. You see more of the hard drugs, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, which are more dangerous drugs with more value. Then you see there are more crops in Mexico of the plants that originate these types of drugs, and that has a consequence in terms of the security of the country itself, of the people.

Question: Do you worry that the market will go toward those harder drugs?

Alcocer: It’s moving, because if you have Washington state and Colorado producing their own marijuana, there is less need for bringing marijuana from other places. Whether that’s being planted in Mexico or just being driven through Mexico, you are going to be needing more of the other drugs, which are more dangerous.

Question: Some of Mexico’s underground economy depends on drug money, marijuana money. It’s almost as if the legal market cuts those people out. I don’t know if that’s a fair question to ask, but it seems like it hurts your economy in a way.

Alcocer: I don’t know the numbers in terms of whether that is impacting negatively the output of the economy and what it is really affecting is the type of products that are being marketed in that subterranean economy. …

It’s not that you are just moving 100 kilos of marijuana, it’s that you are moving 1 kilo of cocaine and heroin, but with a much higher value in terms of the market. That imposes a different way of moving that merchandise along the border and makes things more complicated in terms of security both for the U.S. and Mexico.

I don’t know whether the money that flows is larger than the amount of dollars for just marijuana. I don’t know.

Ray Mark Rinaldi: rrinaldi@ denverpost.com. This interview took place June 17. The questions and answers were edited for brevity and comprehension.

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